“Where can I find ideas for Victorian Costumes?” was a question frequently asked by Beth Carson, aka Lady LaSalle SASS LIFE# 46241 when she first became involved in the costuming aspect of Cowboy Action Shooting.  “I was lucky enough to get pointed in the direction of the Carolina Belle’s web site www.carolinabelles.com affectionately known as The Belle Alley.”  During her visits there, she became friends with Josie Smith, aka Greeneyed Gypsy SASS #60086.  They shared web sites pertaining to costuming, antique clothing, museums and the Victorian Era.  But try as they might, they could not find large selections of dresses to model their dresses after, never mind their whole wardrobe. “Wishing that we had access to ladies periodicals from this time period (1870-1890) that could be shared with others without significant cost or damage to the often delicate books and magazines, we began to hatch a crazy idea.”  After many phone calls and hours spent combing Ebay that crazy idea turned into a dream come true.  The LaSalle Library at the Gypsy’s Needle was born. 

What is the LaSalle Library you ask?  It is a wonderful collection of CDs with images of the Victorian Era acquired and edited by Lady LaSalle.  She painstakingly disassembles, photos, edits, and then reassembles antique periodicals, then catalogs them by year.  There are currently eight years of fashion available for purchase: 1877, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1885, and 1898.  There is also a special 6 CD set of strictly LaMode Illustree with 1877 and 1878 currently available. The images on these CDs are from actual ladies periodicals from the Victorian Era such as Demorest, The Delineator, Ladies Godey’s Magazine, Peterson’s National Ladies Magazine, and many more including some very rare Victorian catalogs.  Images that you will see include hats and dresses, ballgowns and capes, undergarments and corsets, hairstyles and adornments, accessories and shoes, men’s and children’s clothing, color fashion plates and descriptions of the dresses including suggested colors and fabric for construction.  Some even contain advertisements that appeared in the magazines!  Beth and Josie plan on having a CD for every year from 1869 to 1903, the time line for the sport that these ladies love. 

These CDs are the most carefully constructed collection of research images I have seen because they don’t have just a few images from a single year or season.  Each CD contains between 300-1000 images. Incredible nuances and rich detail can be seen on every image. If a person wanted to create or research a costume from the year 1883, the CD from that year would be a great asset.  Not only would they get an image of a dress, but of the corset, underpinnings, shoes, hat, gloves and jewelry that would accompany that specific outfit and what would be appropriate for that era!  Everything needed to pull off a costume and make it look period correct! 

My favorite so far is the 1881 CD followed closely by 1898.  Lady LaSalle sent me a stack of all the CDs and I spent the better part of an evening staring at beautiful images from the Natural Form Era.  She had the unusual opportunity of being on the phone with me during part of that time.  With each new image came a gasp of delight.  I couldn’t finish a sentence I was so taken by the pictures every one being better than the next.  My favorite comment from Lady LaSalle of that evening’s phone conversation was, “Not too shabby, aye?”  There were so many to look at and so many ideas that they gave me!